History test 1

What happened to the Maya after their Classic Period?

They continued to exist in remote locations.

As methods of cultural diffusion, what do migration, trade, and warfare have in common?

They each cause interaction between people from different cultures.

Why did scholars name an early hominid group Homo habilis, which means "handy man"?

They were the first hominids to make stone tools.

Which feature of civilization provides the most important artifacts?

Writing

Why would Old Stone Age humans bury the dead with tools and weapons?

a belief in an afterlife that was similar to this world

In early Neolithic villages, farmers divided the workload among the sexes, which

allowed men to dominate a village's economic and political life.

If people are polytheistic, it means they

believe in many gods.

Which item is an example of an artifact?

coin

The first civilizations in the Americas differed from the first civilizations in Africa and Asia because they

developed in highlands areas

The specialization described in this text was characteristic of .

early civilizations.

Immediate changes in ancient civilizations were often caused by

environmental changes and events.

Which objects provided anthropologists with the first clues about prehistoric life?

footprints, bones, and tools

What might an archaeologist at a hominid site learn from a pile of sharpened stones mixed with cracked animal bones?

how the hominids prepared the animals for cooking

Jericho's status as the first city with a wall indicates that

it had a government that could organize construction projects.

The calendar was an important technology because ________ .

it let people know when to plant and harvest

When interpreting the evidence they find about ancient cultures, historians must not

let their experiences or opinions influence their thinking.

A(n) ________ refers to a person specially trained to read, write, and keep records in ancient civilizations.

scribe

The Neolithic Revolution was characterized by

settled farming.

This tall stone Mayan sculpture of a king is known as a

stela

Which structures were constructed by the Maya?

tall stone monuments called stelae

The large monuments and temples of the Olmec are evidence that

the Olmec developed an advanced civilization that was capable of organizing large pools of labor.

How might a biologist best use his or her expertise to add to the historical record of an archaeological site?

A biologist can analyze human bones as well as bloodstains on weapons or tools.

What feature is common to all hominids?

All hominids walked upright on two feet.

________ refers to the study of the origins and development of people and their societies.

Anthropology

________ refers to the study of past people and cultures specifically through their material remains.

Archaeology

Identified as the earliest group of hominids

Australopithecines

As villages grew into cities, social organization became more complex. People were ranked according to

their jobs.

What type of evidence would give a historian the best first-hand account of what occurred in the past?

written documents

________, which was one of the oldest villages in the world

Çatalhüyük

How did environmental changes affect peoples and civilizations

Environmental changes forced people to migrate to other areas.

Named so as they were fully upright walkers

Homo erectus

Which early hominid group was the first to use fire and the hand ax?

Homo erectus

Means "handy man"

Homo habilis

What have anthropologists learned about how Homo habilis used the tools they fashioned?

Homo habilis used stone tools for cutting, scraping, chopping and sawing plants, animals and wood.

How is the domestication of wild animals and plants tied to the development of human civilization?

Humans changed from a hunter-gatherer society to settling in farming villages.

Which of the following is one of the possible theories about why people first settled the Americas?

Humans crossed a land bridge that existed in what is now the Bering Strait.

Which statement is true about the village at Çatalhüyük?

It included rectangular, connected houses of mud and brick.

________ was one of the world's first villages, established in the modern-day West Bank between 10,000 and 9000 B.C.

Jericho

How did the social structure develop in settled farming villages during the Neolithic Revolution?

Men began dominating social, political, and economic life.

The language spoken by the Aztecs was known as

Nahuatl

Lived mostly in Europe and wester Asia

Neanderthals

The ________was the final era of prehistory and began about 9000 B.C.

Neolithic Period

What people influenced the Maya?

Olmec

Which of the following best describes the emergence of social classes in early civilizations?

People were ranked according to their jobs and economic standing.

What would be different about modern society if the Neolithic Revolution had not occurred?

People would not live in large towns and cities.

________ refers to the period of time before writing was invented.

Prehistory

What is one reason why only a few Maya books on bark paper remain?

Spanish conquerors burned most of the books because they were not written by Christians.

The Leakeys discovered ancient stone tools in a gorge in which country?

Tanzania

In Aztec mythology, it was in the city of ________ that the gods created the world in which the Aztec lived. *

Teotihuacán

What is the main difference between the Aztec and Maya regarding the governing of their societies?

The Maya lived in individual city-states, while the Aztec were unified under one leader.

What is one way in which the Olmec influenced the Maya and the Aztec? *

The Olmec built the first Mesoamerican pyramids, a form used by both the Maya and the Aztec.

Scholars gave one group of hominids the name Homo habilis, or "handy man," because they thought this group was the earliest to

make stone tools.

The most likely reason Neolithic peoples formed governments was because they needed to

organize large public works projects.